Red Clay Comrade

Recently I stumbled upon a link to an AJC op-ed, published August 2021: “The Wendy’s fiasco: The one that broke the city?” The piece—authored by notoriously pro-police AJC contributor Bill Torpy⁠—sought to portray Atlanta as a city rife with gang activity and lawlessness. Throughout the piece, Torpy paints a picture of a “Mad Max Atlanta”. In particular, he references the events occurring at the protester-occupied Wendy’s at which Rayshard Brooks was murdered by police during the summer of 2020. Torpy laments the position in which the Atlanta Police Department found itself during a time of increased scrutiny towards policing, and attempts to connect the violence which occured at the occupied Wendy’s to the larger “crime wave” of 2020—specifically citing the tragic murder of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner on July 4th, 2020  to make his case. Well, I was there too. 

With the Starbucks unionization effort and the recent strikes at John Deere and Nabisco, labor activism in the Atlanta area has been extremely hot over the last few months. However, the upcoming union election for makeup artists at the Atlanta Opera attempting to organize under the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) will potentially have the most wide-ranging effects for workers and contractors nationwide.

Last Monday Jan. 17th, Atlanta DSA members gathered to celebrate the life and legacy of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., an iconic leader of the mass movement for civil rights in the 1950s and 60s. King was a radical, working tirelessly as a community organizer for decades– leading boycotts, marches, and campaigns to win desegregation and voting rights for millions of Black Americans. King was also an adamant advocate of labor rights, and spoke many times on the interconnectedness between the evils of capitalism and other forms of exploitation. 

The following article includes and expands on passages from the 2021 Voter Guide written by Atlanta DSA’s Electoral committee. For a comprehensive perspective on all city council elections, we recommend reading the guide in its entirety at www.atldsa.org/21guide

What should Socialists make of the upcoming election for Atlanta mayor? Many working people are skeptical of elections in the United States. Voting in this country is needlessly complicated. Difficult voting restrictions disenfranchise large numbers of working-class people, while campaign finance laws have rendered our political system an effective oligarchy. Still, if we want to transform our society into a real democracy, we must understand the current system, corruption and all.

I remember my first days as a politically-conscious young person. In 2015, I was a high school student, tinkering around with Minecraft utopias and science fiction; at the same time, Bernie Sanders was ramping up his first run at the US Presidency. I recall key parts of the platform he spoke on that year, ranging from free public higher education, Medicare for All, and a comprehensive plan to address climate change in favor of working people. That last point in particular opened my mind to the possibilities of politics, as I realized the answer to Jim Inhofe’s infamous snowball-in-Congress denialism was not better science communication, but political power. Now, 6 years later, the most recent in a long history of American socialist upsurges is still fighting to save our planet and our people from our government and our ruling class.

The 2021 DSA convention has come to a close. This weeklong event with nearly 1500 socialists around the country participating represents a massive moment for DSA. The Atlanta chapter elected 19 delegates and 4 alternates, and many of us had the chance to speak and voice our views on different topics.